WSVN, Mar 22, 2017 (emphasis added): Officials looking into explosion at Turkey Point that hurt 1… an alert was issued following the “arc flash” explosion… A plant worker was hurt in the explosion and treated at a local hospital…

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mar 20, 2017: Facility: TURKEY POINT… Emergency Class: ALERT… EMERGENCY DECLARED… ALERT DECLARED FOR INDICATIONS OF FIRE IN SAFETY RELATED SWITCHGEAR… “Alert declared at 1119 EDT 3/18/17 based on… Fire or Explosion affecting plant safety systems. Fire alarms in the Unit 3 4kV switchgear rooms resulting in a loss of the 3A 4kV bus and trip of all three Reactor Coolant Pumps… Decay heat is being removed using feedwater and steam generator atmospheric steam dumps. One person was injured with a minor burn and possible sprained ankle and was taken to a local hospital… Notified DHS SWO, DOE, FEMA, HHS, NICC, USDA, EPA, FDA (e-mail), NWC (e-mail), NNSA (e-mail), and NRCC SASC (e-mail)… [UPDATE] Emergency Plan personnel at the Technical Support Center and Emergency Operations Facility were no longer required for support, the Operations Support Center was staffed for recovery efforts, and plant personnel were sufficient and capable for continuing mitigation efforts.

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mar 22, 2017: NRC To Conduct Special Inspection at Turkey Point Nuclear Plant… [A]n arc flash, or small explosion, also damaged a nearby fire door, which may have left other safety systems vulnerable had there been a fire. A plant worker who was in the room was injured and was treated at a local hospital. “This was an event that could have had serious safety consequences and we need to know more about what happened and why,” said NRC Region II Administrator Cathy Haney…

ABC 10 News, Mar 18, 2017: Firefighters respond to electrical fire at Turkey Point — Firefighters responded to reports of a fire inside the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station… according to the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department. Florida Power & Light reported there was an electrical fire… The incident didn’t… pose an immediate danger to the facility, according to FPL spokesman Peter Robbins…

There’s No Covering Up This One — Visible Pollution Leaking from NY Nuclear Plant

by Matt Agorist
June 28, 2016

US Coast Guard officials have cordoned off a portion of Lake Ontario this week, after aerial spotters found a visible “sheen” that is coming from a nuclear power plant in upstate New York.

The Coast Guard Auxiliary aircrew first noticed the sheen on Sunday. Shortly after, a boat crew from the Oswego station tested the sheen and a “temporary safety zone” was put in place.

The Free Thought Project spoke to the Coast Guard Sector Buffalo Command Center on Tuesday and confirmed that the zone was still closed off, and there is no information as to when it will reopen.

The oil sheen is said to be coming from the vent for the hydrogen seal system of the Fitzpatrick plant is in Scriba, New York, approximately 10 miles northeast of Oswego.

According to the Democrat and Chronicle, Entergy Corporation, which operates the plant, found the source of the oil on the roof of a turbine building, said Neil Sheehan, a public affairs officer for the NRC.

“It appears about 20 to 30 gallons that leaked were then drained through the plant’s discharge drain system to the lake,” said NRC public affairs officer Neil Sheehan. “The company has placed oil-absorbent pads on the turbine building roof and has also stopped all circulating water pumps to eliminate any further discharges.”

Despite the miles-long spill coming from their nuclear power plant, Entergy is claiming that the sheen has not impacted the operation of the plant.

It appears that this Fitzpatrick leak is likely the least worrisome of current leaks popping up around the country.

Although the media spotlight is rarely shined upon America’s aging nuclear infrastructure, U.S. nuclear power plants are decaying rapidly, precipitating numerous nuclear environmental disasters across the country.

As The Free Thought Projectreported last month, a major nuclear disaster is unfolding in Washington state at what is known as the Hanford nuclear site. There have been reports that the Hanford has been leaking massive amounts of radioactive material for over two weeks.

Only a week after 19 workers were sent for medical evaluation after a waste tank they were moving was found to be leaking, 3 more workers have reportedly been injured at the site. The workers reportedly inhaled radioactive fumes – the same issue facing the 19 previously hospitalized workers, according to reports, bringing the total number of workers injured at the site up to 22.

On top of the Hanford disaster, in recent months, a fire at the Bridgeton Landfill is closing in on a nuclear waste dump, according to a Missouri emergency plan recently distributed by St. Louis County officials. The landfill fire has been burning for over five years, and they have been unable to contain it thus far.

There are clouds of smoke that have been billowing from the site, making the air in parts of St. Louis heavily contaminated. In 2013, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued Republic Services, the company responsible for the landfill, charging the company with neglecting the site and harming the local environment.

Last year, city officials became concerned that the fire may reach the nearby Lake Landfill, which is littered with decades worth of nuclear waste from government projects and weapons manufacturing. Remnants from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War have been stuffed there for generations. The site has been under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1990, but they failed to make any significant effort to clean up the waste.

In December of last year, the EPA announced that it would install a physical barrier in an effort to isolate the nuclear waste. But the timeline given by the EPA said it could take up to a year to complete. Residents aren’t comforted by that timetable, and think the government, despite years of warning, has done too little to stave off a possible environmental disaster. They are right.

To add to the legitimacy of the residents’ worries about the government’s timeline, the ground has yet to be broken, the fire is still smoldering, and the EPA just finalized, on Thursday, an Administrative Settlement Agreement and Order on Consent (Settlement) requiring Bridgeton Landﬁll, LLC to start work on the isolation barrier system at the West Lake Landﬁll Superfund Site.

Aside from the threat of the U.S. military’s decades-old nuclear waste erupting into flames in the near future, there are also two nuclear reactors inside the United States, which have been leaking for months.

In Florida, a recent study commissioned by Miami-Dade County concluded that the area’s four-decades-old nuclear power plants at Turkey Point are leaking polluted water into Biscayne Bay.

This has raised alarm among county officials and environmentalists that the plant, which sits on the coastline, is polluting the bay’s surface waters and its fragile ecosystem, reports the NY Times. In the past two years, bay waters near the plant have had a large saltwater plume that is slowly moving toward wells several miles away that supply drinking water to millions of residents in Miami and the Florida Keys.

Samples taken during the study show everything from the deadly radioactive isotope, tritium, to elevated levels of salt, ammonia, and phosphorous. So far, according to the scientists conducting the study, the levels of tritium are too low to harm people. However, in December, and January, the levels were far higher than they should be in nearby ocean water which is a telling sign of a much larger underlying problem.

“We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it’s in the national park,” said Laura Reynolds. Reynolds is an environmental consultant who is working with the Tropical Audubon Society and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which intend to file the lawsuit, according to the Times. “We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay.”

Fifteen hundred miles north of the leaking reactors in Florida is the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. Since the beginning of this year, there’s been an uncontrollable radioactive flow from the Indian Point nuclear power plant that continues leaking into groundwater, which leads to the Hudson River, raising the specter of a Fukushima-like disaster only 25 miles from New York City.

The Indian Point nuclear plant is located on the Hudson River and serves the electrical needs of an estimated 2 million people. In January, while preparing a reactor for refueling, workers accidentally spilled some contaminated water, containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium, causing a massive radiation spike in groundwater monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing by as much as 65,000 percent.

The tritium leak is the ninth in just the past year, four of which were severe enough to shut down the reactors. But the most recent leak, however, according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment, contains a variety of radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63, and isn’t limited to tritium contamination.

As the utility companies and government agencies continue to downplay the severity of these situations, the residents who live the closest to these spots are already feeling the effects.

According to a recent report, Radiation and Public Health Project researchers compared the state and national cancer data from 1988-92 with three other five-year periods (1993-97, 1998-02, and 2003-07). The results, published in 2009, show the cancer rates going from 11 percent below the national average to 7 percent above in that time span. Unexpected increases were detected in 19 out of 20 major types of cancer. Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above.

While the U.S. war machine spends hundreds of billions of dollars per year waging war against humanity, Americans at home are dying from a crumbling nuclear infrastructure. The realization that multiple nuclear disasters are currently unfolding across the country, while the mainstream media remains silent, speaks to the fact that most media is owned by the same benefactors that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist.

The American people have been distracted to keep them from hearing about the 3 nuclear disasters occurring on the East Coast.

The debate over which bathroom transgender people can use has been taking over the Internet and our social conversations for weeks now, and it’s getting a bit ridiculous. Transgender people have always used the bathroom that they feel comfortable with, whether it’s the bathroom that belongs to the sex they were born with or not, and there have been no problems.

In the heat of this debate, Americans are not only divided on the issue but collectively distracted from bigger, more important issues, such as the fact that there are three nuclear disasters occurring throughout the nation that have been getting no media attention.

One major disaster that will soon come to head all started with a fire at the Bridgeton Landfill in Missouri that has been burning for five years. Despite this extremely long length of time, authorities say that this fire is nowhere close to being contained. What’s more is that St. Louis County officials have reported that they have an emergency plan in place because the fire is closing in on nuclear waste dump.

It’s been an entire year since the county first became concerned that the fire would reach the West Lake Landfill, which is home to piles of leftover nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Although the EPA has had control over the site since 1990, no significant effort has been made to clear the harmful waste.

The EPA announced last December that it planned on building a wall to prevent the fire from ever reaching the hazardous materials, but the project was supposed to take a year to complete and residents are furious at this slow-moving “effort” to stop a natural disaster. The project has not yet begun and was just barely finalized last week.

Additionally, there are two nuclear reactors in the U.S. that have reportedly been leaking for months.

One of the nuclear power plants in Turkey Point, which is in Florida, was found to have been leaking polluted water into Miami-Dade County’s Biscayne Bay. The pollution is affecting the bay’s surface waters and will likely have a damaging effect on the already-fragile ecosystem.

This pollution is also said to be affecting the drinking water, as huge saltwater plumes coming from the power plants have invaded the groundwater.

“We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it’s in the national park. We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay.”

Meanwhile, another nuclear reactor in New York has been leaking ever since Americans greeted the new year, when workers accidentally spilled contaminated water that contained the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium. The spill caused a massive spike in radiation in the groundwater wells, and one well even saw an increase in radioactivity of about 65,000%.

This is extremely concerning, but when you consider that this is the ninth reported spill in the last year, four of which were so severe that the plant had to be closed, it becomes clear that something needs to change. The residents living close to these leaks and fires are alarmed to say the least, but utility companies and government agencies (whose hands are in the pockets of the utility companies) have continued to downplay the damaging effects of exposure to radiation.

Some Americans have suspected that the passing of North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” which prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom associated with the gender they identify with, has been a ploy to distract Americans from real issues and they may be right. While there are other important matters occurring daily throughout the world, these three nuclear disasters are being underreported on in an effort to keep the public from turning their attention to these dangerous problems.

According to a study released by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Monday, the waters of Biscayne Bay measured 215 times the level of radioactive tritium as is found in normal ocean water.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope traceable to nuclear plant cooling tower operations. In this case, the leak appears to be emanating from the aging canals in the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station located nearby.

“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” said South Miami Mayor and biological sciences professor, Philip Stoddard, as the Miami New Times reported. “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”

Biscayne Bay harbors one of the largest coral reefs on the planet and is situated near the Everglades. Hot, salty water from the canals appears to be flowing back into both national parks, which has caused concern among environmentalists and others from the time Turkey Point planned to expand its reactors in 2013.

“They argued the canals were a closed system, but that’s not how water works in South Florida,” Stoddard remarked.

“How much damage is that cooling canal system causing the bay is a question to be answered,” Everglades Law Center Attorney Julie Dick told the Miami Herald prior to reviewing the report. “There are a lot more unknowns than knowns and it just shows how much more attention we need to be paying to that cooling canal system.”

Tritium, a hydrogen isotope, is considered a precursor indication of leaks from nuclear plants, as it ‘travels’ or spreads faster than, and often precedes, other radioactive agents.

“While the tritium levels far fall below levels experts consider dangerous, the telltale tracer provided the critical link that high levels of ammonia and phosphorus in sections of bay bottom — pollution that is more damaging to marine life — likely came from the canals,” the Heraldexplained. Samples for the county monitoring study were gathered during December and January — and the tritium levels seem to show Florida Power & Light in violation of both local water laws and federal operating permits.

FPL, which operates Turkey Point, will likely receive another violation due to the leak — the county issued a citation in October for tainted groundwater — to force FPL to bring the plant into compliance, the Herald reported Tuesday.

After news of the report made headlines, critics, including environmentalists, nearby rock miners, and Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, came forward in full force calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in the matter.

“For years our state regulators have failed to take seriously the threat to our public safety, to our drinking water, and to our environment posed by FP&L’s actions at Turkey Point,” Rodriguez asserted, according to the New Times.“Evidence revealed this week of radioactive material in Biscayne Bay is the last straw and I join those calling on the U.S. EPA to step in and do what our state regulators have so far refused to do — protect the public.”

The leak also serves as possible confirmation for environmentalists who have suspected radioactive leaks from Turkey Point as the cause of algae blooms appearing in the bay for years.

“Biscayne Bay has not traditionally had algae blooms,” explained executive director for Miami Waterkeeper Rachel Silverstein, reported the Herald. “That’s from pollution. From sewers, septic tanks and now we know, cooling canals.”

Indeed, though FPL claims it continues to protect the health of the bay, as the Herald noted, Turkey Point has created issues for the waterways since the facility began producing more energy three years ago. “When you look at the big picture,” FPL environmental director, Matt Raffenberg, insisted, the canals “are not impacting Biscayne Bay.”

At a meeting on Tuesday, county commissioners discussed the imperative need to bring FPL and Turkey point into compliance with the law.